ANOTHER AUTUMN
It was the apples that were wrong.
The smell of decay creeping
out the gate and down Sea View.
Honey or sweet cider first
but then some older liquor,
musty and twice brewed.
Under our old climbing tree
mounds of fermenting fruit,
fallen flesh soft and shrivelling
left to feed back into the earth.
Above, the wasps make their own wake
reeling drunkenly at the feast.
She loved her garden.
Planted and pruned her borders,
as she tended her family.
And if you shade your eyes
and smile a little,
you can see her work still.
Uproot the bindweed,
deadhead that rose,
pull out the brambles thorny limbs
that catch at unsuspecting fingers.
Perhaps you could yet fit
the pictures to the memory.
But then the apples,
they tell their own story.
For noses cannot lie.
There is work here to be done,
and more than a garden
that needs clearing.

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